Learning objectives
The project tackled in Workshop IV, taken as an advanced compositional exercise, envisages the development of an experience centred around a typology that is complex in terms of its characteristics, whether functional, dimensional, of an urban significance or important for the landscape. The complex type can be assumed within historical case histories as well as the new functional demands of the contemporary context, according to a necessity of endowment verifiable by analysis of urban requisites and alternative strategies that may derive from these.
Prerequisites
Since this is an advanced design workshop, indispensable prerequisites are a knowledge of architectural history and criticism (especially contemporary) and the tools applicable in architectural design, in particular the concepts of building typology and urban morphology.
Course unit content
The design course is applied to the city of Parma seeking to reap its potentiality and forthcoming developments with respect to its characteristic role in the agro-food scenario. Parma as capital of the Emilian ‘Food Valley’, an area already widely recognised also at a European level thanks to the presence of institutions such as EFSA (The European Food Safety Authority) as well as consortium-style structures involved in the production, transformation, sale, and safeguarding of food in addition to dedicated mechanical equipment. The project is inserted into this context with the aim of rationalizing resources that are widespread across the territory, concentrating on two sites that are different in terms of location. The interventions aim to expand upon the base endowment through a close association between production and experimental research (the University Campus area in Via Langhirano), and between production, display, sales and safeguarding (the Ex-Salamini area). The context the design course finds itself in therefore consists of two quite different areas: the Ex-Salamini area in Parma and the area at the entrance to the University Campus in Via Langhirano. In both cases the dimensional and perimetric surroundings are not identified a priori but will be better defined as the occasion arises with respect to the themes and problems deriving from the project. In the case of the Ex-Salamini area, the theme of redesigning the abandoned industrial area merges with the idea of a new pole for agro-food representation of diversified functional types (commerce, but also representation for the consortiums that deal with agricultural concerns, or the reclamation, etc., of mountain municipalities, as well as premises to exhibit these same production processes: a centre of interest at an urban and territorial scale, but also at a supranational scale thinking of international delegations), that assumes as transverse themes: street architecture, the presence of the Via Emilia, especially in that stretch altered by its conversion to a four-lane express road, and consequently, a recouping of its historical identity in relation to the new architecture facing onto it; the architecture of infrastructure due to the presence of a strong road infrastructure (the northern and southern ring roads and the new link road) and a rail network, both of which facilitate accessibility and mobility; the formalization to the east of the city’s “urban gateway”; the construction of the limit/border between city suburb and urbanized countryside (Third Landscape); the preservation of the land (agricultural in primis) working on the concepts of settlement densification; the figurative aspect of the new technologies linked to the concept of sustainability, in which are specified in a compositional key the technological aspects linked to modern needs for sustainability, not merely in the sense of a juxtaposition of elements but as figurative potentiality. In the case of the University Campus area, the theme of designing a centre for teaching and agro-food research is an occasion to reflect on the optimization of the resources present inside the university scientific pole of Parma. In fact, this new centre could interact with all the discipline structures that deal with agro-food concerns (from Agrarian to Environmental Sciences, from Territorial Engineering to Biology, and so forth) not only in terms of teaching in its strict sense but also for those places that store scientific material such as libraries, hypothesizing for the future one single Science Library. Against the idea of the Campus as a closed space ‒ a totally Italian deformation that betrays the historical nature of the Campus – the project for the new centre should propose itself as a place that is open from the outside, a link that joins the worlds of production and research. In the latter case, reflection on the meaning of designing in an environment devised not according to a unitary plan but through the addition of single autonomous elements, are transverse themes; designing at the entrance to the Campus system and extrapolating from it subthemes such as that of the access gate and the hinge-device between interior/exterior, inside/outside, etc. Also in this case the relationship between city and countryside (expressed in the last shreds doomed to building saturation), densification made plain by designing in section on several levels rather than on the horizontal extension, and the transformation of the concept of sustainability in figurative potentiality via the composition of technological element (aspiration chimneys, wind traps, photovoltaic panels).
Full programme
October/November
Preliminary investigation of the theme and critical/theoretical contributions. The first months of the workshop will be dedicated to a preliminary analysis of the theme from both urban/functional and historic/typological points of view. The workshop activity will be accompanied by specific critical/theoretical contributions that will continue for the entire duration of the workshop.
December/January
1) Prefiguration of the layout and distribution criteria of the project inserted into the chosen urban context 1:2,000 – 1:500 (carried out using analogical montage techniques) 2) Prefiguration of the typo/morphological characteristics 1:500 – 1:200 3) Verification of correspondence with general demands
March/April
1) Typo/morphological definition and fine-tuning of the aspects to do with urban insertion 1:500 – 1:200 2) Design of the various parts of the layout 1:100
May/June
1) Definition of the structural and constructional characteristics in relation to the architectonic forms.
2) Definition of plant equipment in relation to the architectonic forms 3) Conclusive redefinition of the project: 1:2,000, 1:500, 1:200, 1:100; details 1:25, 1:10; model.
Bibliography
AA.VV., Architettura di rara bellezza, edit by E. Prandi, FAEdizioni, Parma 2006;
AA.VV., L'architettura italiana oggi. Racconto di una generazione, edit by G. Ciucci, Laterza, Bari 1988;
AA.VV., Lezioni di progettazione, Electa, Milano 1988;
AA.VV., Pubblico Paesaggio, edit by E. Prandi, FAEdizioni, Parma 2009;
AA.VV., Teoria della progettazione architettonica, Dedalo, Bari 1968;
E. Prandi, Community/architecture. Documents from the Festival Architettura 5, FAEdizioni, Parma 2010
G. Canella, Architetti italiani nel Novecento, Christian Marinotti Editore, Milano 2010
AA.VV., La strada ritrovata. Problemi e prospettive dell´architettura della Via Emilia, edit by C. Quintelli, Parma 2005.
Bibliographical suggestions concerning specific project issues will be provided case by case.
Teaching methods
The idea of the city by parts (Aymonino), of the city as (unique) architecture (Rossi), together with the idea of typology as an invariant of morphology, (Canella) constitute the theoretical/methodological basis that gives the workshop a continuous dialectic/critical exchange between city and project, part and whole, architecture and city.
In operative terms, the compositional/design application will be carried out in parallel with the presentation of a general case history of the prescribed theme regarding the design development of complex themes both nationally and internationally. As part of the project there will be an in-depth look at spatial, structural, and technological/constructional relationships. To develop the project the student will be required to learn advanced techniques of virtual or material three-dimensional representation (models). The workshop teaching activity is organised as a place to operate individually or collectively in which design is done in line with a methodology of dialectic exchange between lecturer and student. The theme is tackled by a group consisting of 2-3 students max.. The general analytical and developmental phase of the general system of relations will be evolved by a collective procedure. Intermediate checks will be made collectively in the form of seminars. The final exam is taken in July and will be in the form of a seminar allied to other teaching workshops.
Assessment methods and criteria
Verification of learning will be assessed through seminars by an exam board made up of lecturers in architectural design, by means of an examination and collective discussion of the project.
Other information
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